///Scene: Binah dances through the labors of a miscarriage/// Check out the Fertile Freedoms Listening Party where Binah creates online performance and storytelling events about her fertility journeys.

We are collecting fertility stories as part of the Fertile Freedoms Movement. Increasing awareness around the diversity of our experiences as creators is a central part of the Fertile Freedoms vision. As we explore, cultivate, and sustain more fertile and creative possibilities for ourselves, sharing our stories with each other is one ways we collectively seed more fertility abundance in our world.

Sometimes we start out responding to one idea, but surrendering to the writing takes us some place different, some place else that we really need to go. Discovering that flow of transparency and honesty in our words can be life-changing. Writing, in this way, becomes one of the most courageous and liberating things we can do when committing to nurturing and sustaining fertility wellness.

The following writing prompts are offered as points of entry to support you in getting deeper into your story. They are inspired by a mashup of fertility and creativity stories. Wording is intentionally soft and nonspecific sometimes to encourage you to interpret (or edit) as needed and write from a voice that makes space for your story to exist in a way that is authentic to you.

1. Write the story of your mother giving birth to you.

2. Write the story of your grandmother giving birth to your mother.

3. Write the story of your grandmother giving birth to your father.

4. Write the story of your great-grandmother giving birth to your grandmother or grandfather.

5. Write about getting your first menses (period).

6. Write the story of your womb. What has she seen? Where has she been? Who/what has she birthed? What has she released?

7. Write about your first sexual experience.

8. Write about a time when you felt so alive, so excited, so passionate about what you were doing or where you were going.

9. Write about your journey to conceive a child.

10. Write about your journey to become a mother.

11. Write a letter to your pre-motherhood self.

12. Write a letter to your little girl self.

13. Write a letter to your mother the night before she gives birth to you.

14. Write a letter to your grandmother the night before she gives birth to you mother.

15. Write about a powerful orgasm.

16. Write about a time you followed your intuition.

17. Write about deciding whether or not to keep your baby.

18. Write about choosing whether or not to be a mother.

19. Write about giving birth to your child/ren. Optional: Write a separate story for each child.

20. Write about deciding whether or not to adopt.

21. Write about your ovulation ritual.

22. Write about how your menstruation cycle has evolved from girlhood, to womanhood, to motherhood.

23. Write about meeting the father/s of your children.

24. Write about the moment of conception.

25. Write about losing a baby.

26. Write about your postpartum journey.

27. What does it mean to be a Creator?

28. What does it mean to be fertile?

29. What does it mean to be a mother?

30. Write about why you want to have a baby.

31. Write about why you want to have more children.

32. When did you first know you were a mother?

33. Write about your relationship with your mother.

34. Write about your relationship with your sister.

35. Write about your relationship with your daughter.

36. Write about your relationship with your grandmother.

37. Write about your relationship/s with your children’s father/s.

38. How does it feel to be pregnant?

39. Write about waiting to see if you are pregnant or not.

40. Write about waiting to go into labor.

41. Write about the eggs in your ovaries. What has their experience been, since they have been with you since your mother was pregnant with you?

42. Write about something you feel very passionate about.

43. Write about someone you love.

44. Write about someone who loves you.

45. Write about your breasts and what they have been through.

46. Write about your vagina and what/who has passed through it.

47. What does it mean to be an artist?

48. What do you create?

49. Write about your postpartum body. 

50. Write about how it feels when you dance naked.

51. Write about who you see when you look in the mirror. 

52. Write about a dance experience that made you feel so alive.

53. Write about something you want to create that is always on your mind.

54. Write about a place you’ve never been to but really want to go.

55. Write about a time you travelled by yourself to a new world.

56. Write about your girlhood.

57. Write about your teenage years.

58. Write a letter to your mother about your fertility.

59. Write a letter to your grandmothers about how it has been being raised by their children, your mother and father.

60. Write a letter to your sister.

61. Write about being everyone’s auntie and having no children of your own.

62. Write about having a hysterectomy.

63. Write about having fibroids.

64. Write about navigating hormonal imbalances.

65. Write about the foods you crave when you’re cycle is on the way.

66. Write about how your children have saved your life.

67. Write about how becoming a mother has changed your life.

ready to share your fertility story?
check out the fertile freedoms storyboard.

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A little over a year ago, without any premeditation, I heard a message one night while I was scrolling through my Facebook feed: “Get off of Facebook.” I didn’t question it, even though I’d been logged on continuously at that point for over 11 years. All my significant life markers in that time period had been documented and preserved in the eternal memory of digitalia. I had hundreds of photos, messages, stories, exchanges, and ideas on there. It was a lot to abruptly just turn off and walk away from. But at midnight, that’s what I did, and I haven’t felt the need to go back. 

It was a simple thing, but so profound at the same time. One of the first things I realized was that I had birthed all my children online at that point. Every pregnancy announcement, every birth photo, every early milestone—all coded and sorted in one of a billion bits of information, accessible to the whole world. All of the sudden that seemed so bizarre and unnatural to me to have these precious moments on display on such an impersonal platform. Who was taking in all my information? Who was celebrating me? Scrutinizing me? Tracking me? 

I know, I know, in this technology age we leave traces of ourselves everywhere. Here I am now, putting more information on my site, Mother Mother Everywhere. But I do feel very different this time because I’m the author of everything on this site. I own and control 100% of my content in a way that is not autonomously possible on social media channels. For me, for where I am right now in my mothering artist reality, this balance feels good to me.

There were more layers of revelations in those first few months of being off of Facebook. One, I didn’t realize how much time I spent posting bits of my life and perusing through everyone else’s. Immediately after disconnecting my account, I started writing letters to the mothers in my village. Nearly everyday for the next 3 months, I wrote intimate, longform dialogues exploring all the things that were too raw, too personal, too radical to share in public domains. I was able to open up about traumas, heartbreaks, losses, disappointments, hopes, fears, and dreams in this very meaningful way that created shared space for the other person to receive and respond to me in her own time. I loved the extended ability to share and to share so deeply. But even more that that I loved discovering the possibilities of slow communication. There’s so much we lose in the pressure to speed through everything. A text, an email, even a phone call can’t hold the fullness of all our stories. As mothers and women we need regular interaction with safe spaces where we can unravel, come undone, be seen and witnessed with loving, gentle reception. This is what I was able to access more abundantly once I signed off of Facebook.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and the same internal directive sounded off in my head: “Sign out of Instagram.” Again, there wasn’t a lot of forethought or questioning. It just felt very right and very important to do right then. I haven’t missed seeing the posts of my friends and people I followed. I’ve made more of an effort to reach out to people directly when I genuinely want to connect with them, share a story or picture of my kids, or invite them to participate in a project with me. Even my mass emails have come to a pause. I want to reach out to people who are reaching out to me. I want to experience a mutual, human connection that feels good for everyone involved. This is an interesting space to be in as I’m still in the launching process for Mother Mother Everywhere, but so far it feels like the right way to move forward—building personal, one-to-one relationships with the mothering artists I’ve created this site for and growing slowly from there. 

This is a whole new dance for me. In the past posting on social media has been a central part of how I share my work, grow our business, and stay connected with my loved ones who live in other parts of the world. I have given a lot of thought to the potential ways that deactivating my accounts could cause me to lose touch with people and opportunities. But the more I consider everything, the list of benefits of signing off of social media grows longer and longer everyday. This morning I made a note of the 5 biggest improvements to my life that have happened since tuning out of Facebook and Instagram, and tuning into me, my art, and my family: 

1. More time to read: I always thought of myself as a slow reader, and so oftentimes large books intimidated me and I didn’t even try them. Now, I welcome little pockets of reading time and just get in as much as I can in those interludes, usually while breastfeeding my baby to sleep.

2. Ability to practice learning a new language everyday: I have been intending to start studying a new language for our next family residency for a long time now. We’ve been dreaming up the details of this journey and the more we make plans, the more critical I feel it is for me to reach a level of proficiency in the language before we arrive so I can support myself and my family in acclimating to life in this new world.

3. Reading more books to my children: We read so many books everyday now—and sometimes the same book gets read 10 times in one day! There are books all over the house, and reading time is a spontaneous adventure that has become even more accessible now, as I’m more present with them in all the freed up moments I have from not being on social media.

4. More extensive research about writers, artists, mothers, and fertility studies: I have always loved researching the lives of writers and artists who fascinate me. I also love studying and learning about the diversity of mothering expressions and fertility practices through the history of humanity and around the globe. I enjoy all the extra minutes there are now to journey deeply into another creator’s process or discover the intricacies of ancient fertility rituals in a world that was once so far removed from me.

5. More time to write, create, and dream: This is the most rewarding part of shifting off of social media—having the time to be more of the creator I have always dreamed myself to be. Mothers especially are constantly told that our children prohibit us from deepening our practice as creators, but really our children inspire us to learn how to create in different ways. A significant part of my expanding creative momentum has come from identifying my former relationship to social media as a major obstruction to having abundant time for writing books, dancing, and dreaming up more creative programs for my family and my mother village.

I don’t think this is a one-size-fits-all conversation. We all have different ways of engaging, navigating, and benefiting from the current technology advances in our world. It’s important to pay attention to what we need as mothers and creatives in this now. Only we can hear the inner voice of our intuition guiding us toward a more fulfilling and joyful reality. The most important thing we have to assess day by day, moment by moment is are we listening, really listening, to ourselves, to our passions, to the creative revelations inviting us to become more of all we want to be. The time is there for us to create with it what we will. It’s always been there, and the more we trust our paths as mothering artists, the more time we’ll discover we have to bring all our creative visions to life.

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from richelle:

Ah! I am so there! I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you on IG! But I have just recently signed off social media myself and it already feels so right! Life feels so much more spacious, less cluttered. More room for what matters, less of what doesn’t. All your reasons I am either experiencing or excited to hopefully experience. Thrilled to see what evolves in this time and space. And I know social media will still be there if I ever decide to utilize it again. I also know that would look very different for me than it did before.

Love,
Richelle

I decided to start calling myself an author now. This process has been years, decades in the making. In the past few weeks I’ve started drafting the raw material that will at some point be my first book. It came to me that I don’t have to wait until the book is published to begin calling myself an author. I am already inside the heart of the process of authoring this work. I am already performing all the labors it will take to bring this book to life. I am already what I am also becoming.

I asked a dear mommy friend, who is also an editor, to work with me on this project. I have my first due date for a rough draft to get to her. It’s my birthday, coming up in a few weeks. Every morning before the munchkins are awake I try and write something. I don’t worry about it being cohesive, fully fleshed out, or even really good writing. I get words on the page. I know there will be time to transform these words into a strong, compelling narrative. For now, my job is to just write, and write, and write.

Recently I located and organized all my journals spanning the 20 years of my life from young adult, to woman, to artist, to invisible mother, to birthworker, to mother, to mother mother. This collection of pages journeys through major and minor life changes, relationships, travels, creative projects, pregnancy, losses, recoveries, births, career advancements, life partnership, familymaking, mothering stories, dreams, and the root motivations of characters I am constantly creating for short stories, novels, and plays. Having all my journals on one united shelf feels like a fullness I’ve been needing to experience for so long. The journals have been with me all this time, but they’ve never lived so intimately as they do now, gathered together in the shared celebration of their contributions to my evolution as a mothering artist.

Most of what’s in these journals has nothing to do with the content of the book I’m writing. But the accumulated magnitude of all the words, my words, in close proximity to me supports this knowing that I am already an author. The words, the sentences, the poems, the paragraphs, the scribbles in the margins, the pages, the bound volumes and spiral notebooks and loose papers of life documentation offer a sort of proof, and act as a loving witness to my process. It’s like situating my words so near to me helps me make new words. I am never starting from scratch, in this way. I am always building onto more of my practice. The foundations of my format, and tone, and flow for this book are readily available to me. I can trace my beginnings seamlessly, even as I push passionately forward into new literary worlds.

This writing process, more than anything, excites me. Even when I feel like I don’t know all of what I’m going to say at the start of a new essay, or whether what I’ve spent the precious, pre-dawn, pre-munchkin circus hours writing will actually make it to the final draft—I feel a deep satisfaction in having poured myself into my practice anyway. I love that I have added in some way to the larger becoming of my authorhood. Every word matters, because just like steps, it brings us into the next word, and the one after that, and the one after that. The process for creating my first book is showing me, over and over again, the magical, limitless nature of writing. It is bringing me into more intimate communion with the art of crafting my own narrative, and connecting it to the broader human story of life. For this, I am already so grateful. Everyday, I look forward to stretching and growing more and more into my words. This book is happening. Here we grow!

Today I take the munchkins up the street the big open field that I’ve claimed as our “outdoor” classroom. Conveniently just 5 blocks from home, it’s magically all I ever wanted it to be: accessible, safe, abundantly spacious, clean. And even though it’s not fenced in, it’s so, so big that they can run long distances and move freely without ever getting too close to the street.

I pack the usual stuff: some snacks, some books to read, a blanket to sit on, a water bottle. But then, I also pack something new this time: my wireless headphones. Yes, I intend to get my dance practice in while they run around and do their thing. I am looking forward to a much larger studio, with the fresh air, endless floor, and outstretched sky.

I dress in a single layer, even though they are more bundled up. I want to be comfortable. I plan to break a sweat. I love how I’m preparing for a real dance moment. I am taking great care to insert my creative practice into a moment that is usually all about them. Everyday I ask myself, how can I take up more space inside our family learning lab? How can my creativity and my process as an artist be visible and integrated into all we do?

My joy matters. As the mother, the artist, the primary facilitator of our family-centered education, I am the pulse of this whole dance. I am quite certain that the happier I am, the more connected I am to my own passion spaces—which for me is in the dance, the writing, the community building, the village making—the more engaging, liberated, and adventurous I’ll be when holding the space for my children and their learning journeys.

As I get deeper into these experiments with integrating my creative labors into our everyday learning lab moments—impromptu counting games while I’m dancing in the middle of a circle they’ve created around me, wall-mounted collage art while breakfast is being made, reading these blog posts aloud to my children for storytime—I see that my kids really are learning all the time! Every single moment, no matter what we’re doing, is ripe for some deeper understanding, for more tangible discoveries about how they shape and are shaped by the world around them.

Basically, I don’t have to force the learning. It’s already always happening! I can totally have fun everyday with my children and be deeply immersed in my creative practices as an artist. There is no war here, no separation, no conflict of interests. Being their mother, their teacher, their caregiver, is not in opposition to developing my dance methodology, and writing my books, and devising workshops, and running our family business. In fact, the more rooted I am in my passions as an artist, the more joy, creativity, and positive energy I can source as I navigate all the demands of mothering a band of little people. And when Mommy is more joyful overall, then everyone else is expanding in their joy spaces too.

Mommy’s joy really is contagious. When we first get to the big open field, the magical moment I’ve been dreaming of is not fully coming together. People are whining about this snack not being that snack, people would rather nurse continuously than run around in all this space, people are complaining about not being able to go barefoot in 40 degree weather like they did in the summertime. At first I am annoyed that my children haven’t seamlessly jumped into their happy place, and let me just enjoy my insta-groove, personal dance party. But then, I remember I am free to begin my practice, as is.

It catches them by surprise when I just start running around them, dancing in a circle, jumping side to side, shaking, gyrating, spinning my torso, waving my arms like wings toward the sky. I am getting in plenty of booty rolls as the beat blasts from my pink headphones, headphones that are slightly off my ear so that I can still hear everything they’re saying and be, you know, visibly responsible-parenting in public space.

Bloom keeps asking me, “Mommy, why are you so happy dancing?” I just make sure to keep moving every time he asks me. I want this part of his childhood to be remembered so clearly, all these beautiful moments with his joyful, dancing mother.

They are all paying attention now. I dance with more intensity, kick up my legs, twist and jerk and bend and leap, slide to the left, to the right, back it up, shake shake shake. This makes them laugh more and more. They start to chase me around, imitate me, make up their own moves. Before I know it, they have abandoned the snacks and no one is pulling on me or complaining about something. They are finally running around, happy and free! They are making their own fun, getting into their own adventures, individually and collectively.

This moment is really nice, how it’s all come together. I see it has been up to me all along. I have to be the one to get the party started. I have to center my joys, and in doing so that creates an inevitable momentum of vibrant energy that enlivens the moment for my children. My example inspires them, makes them want to seek, to play, to explore, to grow, to ask new questions, to have big fun, to access more of their own joys.

This ability to tap into what truly brings them joy will carry them very, very far in life. It is sort of like a superpower I have cultivated over the years, and I’m glad they are getting plenty of good practice with it while they’re so young.

It’s a process, I say over and over to myself. Motherhood fractures time. Those luxurious moments of creation that used go on for hours, for days, weeks, months even, are now fragments of themselves. In almost six years of making and raising babies, I have learned how to gather the scattered seconds and the lost minutes found in, around, under, and between my daily mothering labors. I nourish my mothering artist self with these loose pieces of opportunity. If I did not know how to do this, if I did not know it was possible to construct a new relationship with time, my soul would hunger for itself. There would be no reconciliation between all my selves. Like so many mothers I know, motherhood, more than anything else, would seem to be the biggest obstruction to my expansion as an artist.

Still, I am coming into greater appreciation for the slower evolution of my magic making with each year. Because I am mashing together bits of time, the progression of an essay, a story, a dance might stretch, drag, lull, swell, quiver, and then sag again before recovering its momentum. Sometimes I am growing so slowly through a process that it almost feels like nothing is happening. But even the subtlest of motions is movement in some direction. It’s a process, I remind myself. 

The process doesn’t have to be linear, scheduled, rhythmic, or predictable. It moves as I move. Ultimately, I am the creator of all my time. This is not a reality mothers are encouraged to explore. From the moment we are pregnant, we are inundated with fear narratives about how we won’t be able to “get anything done with a baby,” and so even before our little humans are born we are hardwiring ourselves, steeling our nerves for the never-ending battle to have time to ourselves. There is an overemphasis on adhering to a set schedule, on protecting our ephemeral solitude, and very little attention given to emotional cues, intuition, and a mother’s need for a peaceful, supported postpartum in community with other mothers.

The artificial acceleration, the pressure to go, go, go—and alone at that—no matter the cost to body, sanity, or wallet, soon becomes a rigid norm that is scripted for survival. This is how so many mothers, despite their most diligent efforts to sustain their creativity, lose the war. Tethering themselves and their time to a system where they are just as invisible as their labors, their once vibrant artist selves become dry, brittle remnants, shadowy memories from a time before birthing and babies. In a society addicted to going faster and faster, mothers wallowing too long in the rubble of dreams deferred are then made to feel shame for their failure to thrive at this manufactured speed. So many brilliant, amazing mother-artists succumb to the bullying to just let go of their fragmented, creative sparks, to surrender their art and just fall in line with the script. 

But true creativity can never be completely suppressed. Everywhere on this earth there are bright bits of our potential flickering and beckoning to the mothers who can still feel something of a creative pulse. It is by way of these lasting strains of light that we mothering artists are able to find each other, and begin the labors of restoration and re/connection to our creativity and our passions.

It has taken many cycles of practicing, stumbling, recovering, and reimagining to realize that despite all the directives to accelerate, I am actually more fulfilled moving at a pace that is natural to my reality as a mothering artist, and one who is homeschooling three munchkins and running a family business. I have fresh, mother-centered eyes now. I see the development of a text, of a song, of a movement sequence amidst the lovely chaos of life with my little people. While chopping potatoes for breakfast I am singing loudly, composing a song for a new performance piece. While scraping poop off of a cloth diaper I am hearing the opening lines of a character’s dialogue, the way her hair falls over her face as she laughs coming into focus in my mind. While setting up a water and temperature experiment, the music is blasting and I am dancing back and forth from the cabinet to the table, arranging our supplies and giving my children some movements to play with as they run circles around me.

I wish I had come more gently into this understanding about how the interplay of time and creativity would be radically re/discovered in motherhood. Instead, it has been a turbulent, heartbreaking, exhausting, and at times bitterly discouraging, journey toward awareness. It was only after the birth of my third child that I finally, graciously, identified and embraced this language around slow mothering and saw its vital application in how I engage with my artistry. 

Now I am breathing through my process, celebrating the access to the unexplored depths of my creativity that working slowly fosters. I rarely experience creative blockages and slumps as I am always engaged in some aspect of my creative process. My children, having splintered every sense of what is time and what is mine, have helped me embody more tangible and transferrable realities of what I can do with every second of the day and the many ways I can create as a mothering artist. I am so grateful for our evolving collaboration, and that I can see the beauty in our gradual progress. The world around us continues to move swiftly right along, but this snail’s pace is deeply generative in its own magical way.